I did a series of CBC Radio interviews for morning shows around the nation. The topic was the carbon footprint of our diets. Here’s the link to the CBC Ontario Morning Show. My blurb starts at the 3-minute mark.

This profile appeared in the Fall 2013 issue of Talking SENS, the quarterly newsletter published by the School of Environment and Sustainability (SENS) at the University of Saskatchewan.

SENS:

What are your research interests?

Phil Loring:

I am interested generally in food systems in the North, and how locally-scaled food production and distribution systems can contribute to regional food security. These questions allow me to examine interrelations between social and ecological sustainability. Lately, that research has focused on small-scale fisheries in Alaska, but I am also interested in subsistence practices and agricultural systems.

SENS:

Where were you born?

PL:

I was born in Salem, Massachusetts, but I grew up in Southern Maine and continue to call it home.

SENS:

What are your most significant achievements?

PL:

I think my most significant achievement has been the graduation of my first graduate student. Hannah Harrison received an MS in Environmental Ethnography from the University of Alaska Fairbanks last May. She worked on the sustainability of and conflicts over Alaska's salmon fisheries. I knew, in the abstract sense, that teaching the next generation of students is probably the most important contribution we can make to a new sustainability renaissance, but witnessing her growth as a scholar and seeing her now with a professional position in the fisheries conservation sector has been both revealing and rewarding.

SENS:

What is your favorite music?

PL:

I listen to many kinds; among my favorites are the Barenaked Ladies (noted here because they are Canadian!). My absolute favorite group, however, is Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers. They are hard to classify in terms of style, with a Southwestern/Americana/mariachi rock vibe. I describe their early work as a soundtrack for Cormac McCarthy's "Border Trilogy."

SENS:

Who are your influences?

PL:

I attribute my career path to the author Daniel Quinn, whose Ishmael and subsequent works provide the scaffolding for my current approach to sustainability. My academic advisor and close friend Craig Gerlach has had the most influence on my intellectual and professional development. Anthropologists Gregory Bateson and John Bennett round out my primary academic influences. Spiritually, I find much insight in the Tao Te Ching, and creatively, I am captivated by the art of Kieth Harring for its honesty and social commentary, and surrealists like Rene Magritte for their assault on the epistemological hegemony of the renaissance.

SENS:

What impact do you hope your research will have?

PL:

I do this work in order to help people achieve community and livelihood security. While I am encouraged by the boom of sustainability research and practice, I am concerned by its largely-technocratic tone. I hope to help point people in the direction of solutions that are simple rather than complicated. Part and parcel to this is helping people to rediscover that unsustainability is not an innate failing of human nature, but rather that we have it in us to be valuable participants in natural ecosystems.

SENS:

How do you define sustainability?

PL:

I prefer to think of sustainability as a side effect, or emergent property rather than as an explicit goal. I believe that if we attend to social and environmental justice issues that the behaviors and resource management regimes that result will be both sustainable and resilient. As such, I argue that current sustainability challenges are primarily social and cultural rather than technological in nature.